Argyle Lake State Park

The second day of our Labor Day weekend trip had us going to Argyle Lake State Park in Colchester, IL. This park is about 4 and a half hours west of Chicago, or an hour and 45 minutes south of the Quad Cities.

The park used to be known as Argyle Hollow, and was part of a stage coach route that ran between Galena and Beardstown. The land was purchased in 1948 by the state, and the lake was formed after building a dam.

This park is pretty big, and we were fairly optimistic about the trail options there. Although the majority of the trails are rated as either difficult or very difficult, we were able to find a loop trail that was comparatively short and had a lower difficulty. Additionally, it also happened to run right along the lake, before crossing the road and finishing in the woods to circle back.

Unfortunately, this trail had unexpected maintenance problems. We started by parking at the westernmost point of the loop, and heading down the stairs to the lake. The state of the stairs might have been enough to deter some people from attempting this trail at all, but we decided to take our chances and just take our time heading down them. With the stairs and the footbridges we came across, there were a lot of loose or rotted boards. There were several points where we decided to walk on the dried up flat area next to bridges, instead of risking walking on the bridges themselves.

On top of this, there were issues with overgrowth and fallen trees. Sometimes we had to leave the trail to navigate around the dense foliage. At one point, I had to take off my camera bag in order to crouch underneath a fallen tree to get past. If we didn’t have the lake in sight the entire time, we would have been worried about getting lost at those spots where the trail disappeared into the overgrowth. In fact, the concern about getting lost led us to cut this trail short. After finishing the first half, we walked back along the road for the second day in a row.

All of the issues we had were even more disappointing to us, because getting to walk along the lake was so pretty. It would have been so nice to be able to enjoy this really beautiful park without being concerned about losing the trail or taking a misstep on a rotted bridge.

After cutting our losses, we first attempted to go to a winery, but it was unfortunately closed due to a wedding being hosted there. After finding nothing else within a reasonable distance, we decided to head over the state line into Keokuk, Iowa and visit Green Frog Distilling. This place is very small, but is still pretty well known in Iowa. Their whiskey was even stocked at the Busted Cup Brewhouse. We liked the flavors they had available, with the caramel one being especially approachable.

Argyle Lake State Park is so beautiful, and it is such a shame that our experience trying to hike here was as disappointing as it was. Seeing the infrastructure of the stairs and bridges on the trail being there, but being in disrepair to the extent is confusing as well as disappointing. This park was pretty busy the day we were there, between campers and a community event in the surrounding area. While it is true that most of the hiking here is on the more difficult end of the spectrum, it still seemed to us that the difficulty should have been driven by the terrain itself, instead of a lack of maintenance. We think that people will still enjoy this park, especially those wanting to kayak or fish, but inexperienced hikers should probably visit somewhere else.